Gold, film review: Ugly on the inside, fake on the outside

Even when this film doesn’t cheat it feels like a scam, says Charlotte O'Sullivan
Con artists: Matthew McConaughey and Edgar Ramirez
BBP Gold
Charlotte O'Sullivan3 February 2017

What's the opposite of a rebirth? Re-death? Whatever the technical term, Matthew McConaughey’s brilliant career is in trouble. He is the producer and star of this crime adventure and gained weight for the role (just as he shed pounds for his Oscar-winning turn in Dallas Buyers Club). Yet the flab looks fake. How ironic that even when this film doesn’t cheat it feels like a scam.

The real events Gold claims to be inspired by took place in the Nineties and involved three mysterious characters: David Walsh, a Canadian businessman, John Felderhof, an Australian geologist, and Michael de Guzman, a Filipino exploration manager. Together these men sold the dream that a patch of land in Indonesia was packed with gold, and when it didn’t come true Wall Street was thrown into chaos and investors, many of them ordinary teachers with pension plans, got screwed.

In the movie the victims of the fraud are mostly snooty and posh, so we’re not encouraged to feel sorry for them. Meanwhile, de Guzman has become charismatic Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez, solid). As for Walsh and Felderhof, they’ve been conflated into colourful Nevada hustler Kenny Wells (McConaughey, trying too hard).

Kenny has a sweet-natured girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard, excellent) but the real focus is his bromance with Acosta. The men explore rainforests, talk-the-talk in New York boardrooms and, when they get caught up with Indonesia’s corrupt ruling family, meet a tiger. Kenny actually touches the beast to show he has “balls”.

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1/99

McConaughey is a big fan of testicles (he once explained that, when playing heroes in rom-coms, he fought “to keep the balls on the guy”). Unfortunately, when faced with Kenny’s cojones, the phrase that springs to mind is “small beans”.

Deluded-yet-indomitable, Kenny is just too familiar a figure and the absurdly upbeat twist ending is the final insult. The film-makers, in trying to turn a financial scandal into a fairytale, betray their own lack of ethics.

Gold isn’t just a mess, it’s cold to the touch, so I’m glad it flopped at the US box office. Still, let’s hope its poor performance isn’t blamed on McConaughey’s hair ’n’ make-up. Kenny has very little hair; his suits look like they’ve been dry-cleaned by Fungus the Bogeyman, and his teeth resemble deckchairs. La La Land movies are crammed with cute dreamers. Here’s one good thing about Gold: it wants us to love an escape artist who’s fugly.

Cert 15, 121 minutes

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